- So just what is this thing
we keep talking about, culture?
It's a rather broad amorphous term
that a lot of people define in different ways.
So it's important to have a common language
that you can use when you're communicating
the importance of culture
and if you're going to track your progress
as you're shifting your culture
it's important to keep in mind,
well, what the heck are we talking about?
There's lots of different definitions out there.
I'm gonna give you some
that resonate well with my clients,
that work well for me when I think about culture
when I'm doing my culture training.
And the first one just being
that it's the feel of the place.
It's the vibe. It's the environment.
You can go into a certain department
into a certain company and right away
you just get a sense of the vibe of the place.
Now that may sound a little airy-fairy,
that may sound not very scientific,
pretty hard to measure vibe, right?
It's not like you can break out your old vibe meter
like a Ghostbuster and (host buzzing)
crank the dials
and the vibe is off the chart in this room.
However, I wouldn't discount the importance of that.
You know, our gut level feelings about things matter,
your employees gut level checks.
If you ask them,
if you include that question in a survey even,
what is your feeling about the vibe
of this work environment?
You can get some interesting dialogue,
interesting conversations going
and it is something to consider
because even though we can't measure it objectively
it is something that I think everybody
intuitively understands you can sense.
You can just feel it.
Another great definition of culture is
it's just how we do things around here
and if you catch yourself ever saying that,
well this is just the way things work around here,
it's how we do things around here.
That's a culture statement that reflects your culture norms
both good and bad.
Sometimes people say that
when it's not a very good practice at work
and they say, well, that's how we do things around here.
That reflects and defines your culture,
but it's not the what you do,
it's how you do things that drive success.
That's why culture
is such an important competitive advantage.
It's how you do things differently than your competitor,
not just the what you do in your business
and this goes down to the individual employee level as well.
We've all probably worked with people
that are brilliantly smart,
really intelligent people that are highly trained,
highly skilled technicians.
They have a very deep level of knowledge in a specific area.
So they know their job intimately
but they're a jerk to work with.
They are a pain in the butt to work with
and what we need to communicate to our employees,
this is why hiring, training, onboarding,
this communication stuff, is so important.
That's not enough.
If you are going to build a rocking great culture
those people need to understand that part of their job
isn't just to be technically proficient,
it's how they're going about their jobs that matters.
That's why I love what a bank in Denmark,
in Copenhagen has done
in terms of giving their employees a sense of purpose
broken down into two different categories
and I really love this simple concept.
So the first purpose that they tell all their employees,
their reason for being, their reason for having their jobs,
is of course, to provide phenomenal customer service
to their banking customers.
That's number one, but then they also say,
another part of your purpose working at this bank
is to contribute to the kind of work environment,
to the culture that makes people want to show up
on a Monday morning.
And so they make that totally clear
that part of your job isn't just to serve our customers,
just to do your job proficiently well,
it is to think about how you are contributing
to the culture in our bank.
So culture is how you do the things you do.
And at a broad level culture is reflected
in your words that you use,
the language you use,
it is reflected by the artifacts
that you display in your workplace,
the physical environment,
the things you hang on the walls,
it is reflected in your values,
your traditions, your behaviors, your attitudes.
All of that that separates you and makes you different
than your closest competitors
and think about that for a moment.
How are you, right now,
different than your closest competitor
in terms of your culture, how you do things,
and how do you want to define yourselves
differently than your competitors?
All of those things contribute to your culture.
Another definition that I love is
your culture is what your employees do,
or it's certainly reflected in what your employees do,
how they behave when nobody is looking.
That's a really cool definition
because it gets to the heart of so many different
workplace culture issues like trust,
like clear expectations, how autonomous employees feel,
how empowered employees feel,
how do your employees behave when nobody is looking.
Your culture is also,
and here's a challenging thought for you,
your culture is also reflected
in terms of the lowest common denominator behavior
that you tolerate.
If you have practices in your workplace right now
that everybody knows are kind of down here
and that they're not the best practices,
that's because your culture is allowing that to happen.
That's because your culture
is supporting those lowest common denominator behaviors.
So I challenge you to think about those
and think about those hard,
what those behaviors might be.
And your culture, of course, is also reflected
in what you aspire to be at your absolute best.
So take some of those phrases, some of those words,
and see if you can make them work for you or use them all.
Culture, it's hard to distill down sometimes
to just one or two words.
It takes a conversation sometimes.
Turn it into a story.
Turn it into real life examples
if you wanna drive home the importance of culture
and what it is you mean when you speak about culture.